Contents
0%Hey!
I found a supplement ad where six ingredients walk on one at a time, introduce themselves, and sing the one thing they do. It is the sharpest crossover of two AI ad formats I have seen, so I took it apart.
Watch it first: a sung ingredient list, all 90 seconds of it
This is an ad for True Nutra's 6-in-1 Lymphatic Complex. The product bag opens at a flip chart, and then Cleavers, Bromelain, Rutin, Burdock, Dandelion and Kelp each take a turn inside a glowing vein tunnel.
I did not make this one and I do not have its numbers. I was told it performed well, every claim inside it belongs to that brand and not to me, and the format itself is not a curiosity: the ads carrying the most impressions in the biggest supplement accounts on Meta right now are songs. That part I have checked in the Ad Library.
The same brand, the same six ingredients, narrated instead of sung
Same product, same six botanicals, same buy one get one free offer, same woman who stopped wearing shorts. The difference is the delivery. This one is a third person voiceover reading the ingredients like a label, over a needle-felt world.
Put the two scripts next to each other and the change is obvious.
| Ingredient | The narrated version | The sung version |
|---|---|---|
| Cleavers | "a deep internal flush, dissolving the toxic sludge clogging your lymphatic drains" | "I'm Cleavers. I clean the clogged drains in your legs" |
| Bromelain | "anti-inflammatory analgesic properties, breaking down the proteins that make your legs feel stiff" | "I'm Bromelain. I cool down the inflammation in your calves" |
| Rutin | "a powerful bioflavonoid, begins to strengthen and seal the walls of your veins and capillaries" | "I'm Rutin. I make your weak vein walls strong from the inside" |
| Burdock | "a natural internal detergent, pulling stagnant fluid away from your lower legs" | "I'm Burdock. I pull the dirty trapped waste out of your legs" |
Both columns are my own transcriptions, trimmed to the clause about each ingredient.
The narrated column is written for a label. The sung column is written for a character. And singing it is not the slower option: the sung ad covers the same six ingredients in 219 words over 90 seconds, where the narrated one needs 239 words and 113 seconds.
What changes when the list sings
The cast of the sung ingredient list: Cleavers, Bromelain, Rutin, Burdock, and Dandelion with Kelp
Three rules do all the work in the sung version.
- Every ingredient speaks in first person. "I'm Cleavers" turns a mechanism into a cast member, and a cast member can have a face, a walk and a voice.
- One ingredient, one job, one metaphor. Cleavers cleans drains. Bromelain cools. Rutin reinforces walls. Burdock pulls waste out. Nobody gets two jobs and nobody gets a mechanism of action.
- One world for all six. Every ingredient shot happens inside the same glowing vein tunnel, so six very different characters still read as one ad instead of six clips.
If you cannot say what an ingredient does in one short sentence a ten year old would follow, it does not get its own verse. Cut it, or pair it up the way this ad pairs Dandelion and Kelp into a single duo.
The specimen, shot by shot
The five shots of the sung ingredient list ad with timecodes: the promise, six ingredient verses, the payoff, the offer, the close
Two structural choices here are worth stealing.
The offer waits for the payoff. The ad spends 52 seconds on the problem and the six ingredients before anyone sees a result. Only then come the shorts in the park and the friends asking if she had surgery, and the bottle facts do not arrive until 0:59.
The problem comes back right before the click. The last line before the call to action restates the opening, those spiderweb veins that will not go down no matter what you do. The ad ends on the person it is for, not on the product.
The length is deliberate too. Ninety seconds is normal here, and song-style ads regularly run two to five minutes, because the song is what holds attention rather than the cutting.
How to write a sung ingredient list
The three line verse skeleton for an ingredient, next to the real Bromelain verse from the ad
Start from one complaint, not from the formula
"Spiderweb veins that will not go down" is the entire targeting brief for this ad. Write the complaint first and let it decide which ingredients make the cut.
Give every ingredient one job in plain words
Write the job before you write the lyric. Clogged drains, inflammation, weak vein walls, trapped waste. If two ingredients do the same job, merge them into one verse.
Write every verse in first person
Three lines and you are done: the ingredient names itself, says its job, then says what the reader gets. "I'm Bromelain. I cool down the inflammation in your calves. No more pain after a long day."
Keep one melody for every verse
Six verses with the same shape want the same tune. A repeating melody is what turns a list into a chorus, and it is the thing a viewer is still humming when the offer lands.
Hold the payoff, then the offer, then the problem again
Result first, offer second, and the last line before the call to action goes back to the complaint you opened with.
The verse structure, the slicing rule and the prompt shape are written into one public SKILL.md, so the agent applies them instead of you remembering them. Get the free song-ad skill for Claude.
How to produce it: one storyboard image, one generation, one slice of the song
An ingredient list looks expensive because every ingredient is its own scene. It is not, because you do not generate one clip per scene. You draw several scenes into a single storyboard image and let one generation move through them.
Storyboard batch 1: five panels in one image
Storyboard batch 1Storyboard batch 1Three things go into each generation: the storyboard image for that batch, the hero character sheet so the same face shows up in every shot, and the slice of the song that covers those shots. The song is an input, which is what makes the character sing on the beat instead of near it.
Storyboard batch 3: the after-life panels
Storyboard batch 3Storyboard batch 3Both clips are from a supplement ad we made for a client, so these are the panels I can show. The full eight step version of this workflow, from customer research to the CapCut export, is in the song ad walkthrough, and the slicing and lip-sync detail is in the Suno post.
Same skill file, the production half of it: the three inputs per generation, the no gaps slicing rule and the end screen. Get the free song-ad skill for Claude.
Questions I get about ingredient list ads
What is an ingredient list ad?
An ad where the structure is the formula. Each ingredient is named, gets one claim about what it does, and gets its own shot. It works because it answers the question a supplement buyer actually has, which is why this one and not the cheaper tub next to it.
How many ingredients should one ad cover?
As many as have a distinct job, and no more. The ad above covers six and pairs two of them into one verse, which is roughly the ceiling before the verses start sounding identical.
Can an AI ad make health claims?
That is a question for whoever signs off on your claims, not for a format post. What the format decides is structure: one ingredient, one job, one line. Whether that line is one you are allowed to say is between you and your regulator.
Which products fit a sung ingredient list?
Anything sold on what is inside it. Supplements are the obvious home, and the same shape works for skincare, pet food and cleaning products. If your product is sold on a feeling instead of a formula, run the story version of the format instead, and there are four of those broken down here.
Does the format actually work?
For this specific ad I have no numbers, only that I was told it performed. For the format, the evidence I do have is that a song ad we made for a mattress client returned 5x ROAS over two months (the full case study), and that the highest impression ads in several eight figure supplement accounts are songs.
Next Steps
If you sell a formula, this is the cheapest interesting thing you can test next. Write the six jobs, write the six verses, generate the song, and you have an ad nobody in your category is running.
- Start with the full workflow. How to make an AI singing ad with MiniMax H3 is the end to end version, from research to export.
- Look at more of them. Four song ads scaling on Meta right now, and what the big ad accounts are running.
- Try the easiest version first. This short walkthrough is one character and one jingle.
- Make one for your own product. Research, script, song, characters, storyboards and generations happen in one chat. Open Starpop.
Then come and show me what you made in the Starpop Discord. The ingredient ads are the ones I most want to see.
